Airports start to recover from snow blast

The National Weather Service has lifted its winter storm warning for the D.C. area early and the region’s airports are beginning to recover from a winter blast that led to more than 3,000 flight cancellations across the country and dumped up to 7 inches of snow on Washington.

The cancellations include more than three-quarters of the flights coming in and out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, a total of more than 700 flights scrubbed. More than 250 flights arriving and departing from Baltimore-Washington International Airport have also been canceled, according to FlightAware.com, and 350 flights originating from or landing at Dulles International have been canceled.

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All three airports were beginning to recover Monday afternoon. At around 2 p.m., Reagan National announced that snowfall there had stopped. BWI said it expected some flights to take off and arrive Monday afternoon but warned that delays would linger. Snow ceased at Dulles shortly after 4 p.m.

The cancellations were just the latest in what has been a brutal winter for the nation’s airlines.

MasFlight, an aviation consulting firm in Bethesda, Md., released a study Monday estimating that winter weather had extracted a $5.8 billion economic cost on airports, airlines and passengers from December to February. A normal winter deals $3.3 billion in damage.

The study estimated that 1 million flights had been canceled or delayed, hurting some 90 million passengers. Most of the lost economic impact came from passengers, whose lost productivity and out-of-pocket costs total $5.3 billion.

Metro has canceled bus service for the entirety of Monday, but rail lines remained open. The federal government, House and Senate all announced on Sunday they would be closed Monday. MARC train service between Washington and Baltimore was canceled.

The National Weather Service said it expected between 3 and 7 inches of snow in D.C. The weather service also warned of possible thunder during the day and wind gusts of up to 28 mph.Amtrak previously said it would be running fewer trains on the popular Northeast Regional and Acela Express routes that connect D.C. to cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston.